Once again I’m back with yet another practice question that I’ve stumbled across that I wanted to share.

You are an architect for a news-sharing mobile application. Anywhere in the world, your users can see local news on topics they choose. They can post pictures and videos from inside the application. Since the application is being used on a mobile phone, connection stability is required for uploading content, and delivery should be quick. Content is accessed a lot in the first minutes after it has been posted, but is quickly replaced before disappearing. The local nature of the news means that 90 percent of the uploaded content is then read locally (less than a 100 kilometers from where it was posted). What solution will optimise the user experience when users upload and view content (by minimizing page load times and minimizing upload times)? (Choose 1)

a. Upload and store the content in a central Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket, and use an Amazon CloudFront distribution for content delivery.

b. Upload and store the content in an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket in the region closest to the user, and use multiple Amazon CloudFront distributions for content delivery.

c. Upload the content to an Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Instance in the region closest to the user, send the content to a central Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket, and use an Amazon CloudFront distribution for content delivery.

d. Use an Amazon CloudFront distribution for uploading the content to a central Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket and for content delivery.

I’m back with another sample question that I’ve come across whilst progressing with my studies.

Your company is migrating infrastructure to AWS. A large number of developers and administrators will need to control this infrastructure using the new AWS Management Console. The Identity Management team is objecting to creating an entirely new directory of IAM users for all employees, and the employees are reluctant to commit yet another password to memory. Which of the following will satisfy both these stakeholders? (Choose 1)

Following attempting a Practice Exam as part of my own studying I’ve been searching the internet for some sample questions. I’m going to try and break down what I believe to be the correct answer and the rationale of how I got to that answer. I’m happy for people to comment and provide their input as well so feel free to let me know if you disagree.

For a 3-Tier, Customer facing, inclement weather site utilising a MySQL database running in a Region which has 2 AZ’s (Availability Zone), which architecture provides fault tolerance within the Region for the application that minimally requires 6 web tier servers and 6 application tier servers running in the web and application tiers and one MySQL database? (Choose 1)

a. A web tier deployed in 1 AZ with 6 EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) instances inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), and an application tier deployed in the same AZ with 6 EC2 instances inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB, and a Multi-AZ RDS (Relational Database Service) deployment, with 6 stopped web tier EC2 instances and 6 stopped application tier EC2 instances all in the other AZ ready to be started if any of the running instances in the first AZ fails.

b. A web tier deployed in 2 AZ with 6 EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), and an application tier deployed in 2 AZs with 6 EC2 instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB, and a Multi-AZ RDS (Relational Database Service) deployment.

c. A web tier deployed in 2 AZ with 3 EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), and an application tier deployed in 2 AZs with 3 EC2 instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB, and a Multi-AZ RDS (Relational Database Service) deployment.

d. A web tier deployed in 2 AZ with 3 EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB (Elastic Load Balancer), and an application tier deployed in 2 AZs with 6 EC2 instances in each AZ inside an Auto Scaling Group behind an ELB, and one RDS (Relational Database Service) instance deployed with read replicas in the other AZ

The way I personally always try to approach a question is to try and rule out the obvious incorrect answer to reduce the scope of answers.

Well I’ve only gone and done it and have finally booked the date to sit the AWS Solution Architect Professional exam. The date is set for the 1st December 2017 which is the last day of AWS re:Invent and I thought I’d mark my first re:Invent by trying to gain a new certification there. Secondly I also thought that given I’m also attending the Solution Architect Professional exam readiness bootcamp whilst in Las Vegas at the conference.

I’ve already tried testing my knowledge by sitting the official practice exam as a starter for ten and I wasn’t too disappointed with my score given I’ve not really tried covering much of the material so far.

At the recent CenturyLink H2 Sales Kick-Off I was presented with the Most Valued Person Award by our EMEA Managing Director Richard Warley. This came as a complete shock to myself, but was a lovely surprise given it was voted for by CenturyLink employees within EMEA. I was presented with a Certificate, Glass Award, Bottle of Champagne as well as an Amazon Echo.

Given I’m a gadget freak according to my wife, this was a lovely gesture by the business. When I got home I was like a child at Christmas frantically trying to unpackage the box before figuring out where I was going to put it in the house.